After acquiring Steve Montador at the 2009 trade deadline, Bruins general manager Peter Chiarelli expressed his admiration for the team then-Calgary GM Darryl Sutter had put together prior to a run to the ’04 Stanley Cup final.

Chiarelli didn’t need to verbalize the high esteem he held Sutter in because the Bruins’ roster reflected it quite well – with Montador joining incumbent Bruins Andrew Ference, Chuck Kobasew and Stephane Yelle as players that had been one win from the Cup with Calgary that were now on Boston’s payroll.

A year and a half later, only Ference remains with Boston from that quartet of ex-Flames. While Chiarelli’s philosophy of building around all-world goaltending and being a gritty, hard-to-play-against team still mirrors part of Sutter’s approach, Bruins fans must hope that that’s as far as Chiarelli will go with his replication of the Sutter strategy.

Sutter, who became Calgary’s GM in April 2003, resigned/was pushed out this week by Flamers ownership and turned the reins over to Jay Feaster. The Sutter stint as GM in Calgary hit its pinnacle at the start with the trade for superstar goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff in November 2003 and then that run to the ’04 final. However, the rest of Sutter’s run was decorated with first-round playoff exits, lost free agents and poor trade decisions.

Feaster inherits an organization that is old, slow, overpaid and encumbered by nearly a dozen players on no-trade or no-movement contracts. It is a team with few blue-chip prospects in the development pipeline, thanks to a series of ruinous trades over the past two years in which the future was sacrificed for quick fixes in the present that backfired in big, meaningful ways (can anyone say Olli Jokinen?).

Jokinen was a player Sutter twice erred on. First, he dealt youngsters Matthew Lombardi and Brandon Prust, along with a first-round pick, to get the center from Phoenix at the ’09 deadline. Then after swapping him for marginal NHLers last winter, Sutter re-signed Jokinen last summer. This season, Jokinen has produced just 19 points in 34 games while hitting the Flames cap for $3 million this and next season.

Sutter’s sins went well beyond two poor decisions involving Jokinen. The GM failed to retain the likes of Kristian Huselius and Mike Cammalleri when they hit free agency, and he lost them for nothing. He traded for Alex Tanguay, who scored 81 points his first season with the Flames and then dropped off to 58 the next year and hasn’t been the same player since.

In explaining that the Flames were able to re-sign star defenseman Dion Phaneuf after his entry-level deal expired but then failed to put a championship-caliber team around him, Duhatschek wrote Wednesday:

But eventually, the Flames had to pay for Phaneuf’s early successes – and soon backed themselves into a corner by repeatedly overpaying just enough to retain all their core players and land players via free agency. The result was today’s aging, capped-out team that has trouble keeping up with some of its free-wheeling, penny-pinching, more-successful adversaries.

Sutter compounded the problem by dealing Phaneuf away to Toronto last winter and receiving just marginal NHL talent in return. An even bigger blunder was handing out no-movement and no-trade clauses as though they were candy. The Flames have 10 players signed for next season with an NMC or NTC, according to CapGeek.com.

That’s one of the areas where Chiarelli has obviously strayed from the Sutter blueprint. While Chiarelli gets criticized for being generous with his NMC and NTC distribution, Boston has just five players with such clauses signed for next season. In addition, he has managed to re-sign key potential unrestricted free agents in Patrice Bergeron, Zdeno Chara, Marc Savard and Tim Thomas, and got Milan Lucic to commit to Boston without testing the restricted free agency market.

While the first round of the playoffs was Calgary’s biggest road block – the Flames lost there every year from ’05 to ’09 until missing the playoffs last spring – under Sutter, Boston’s season has come to a halt in the second round two years running. It’ll be interesting now to see if Chiarelli can continue to stick to his own game plan and not fall in the Sutter-like trap.

The pressure this winter to swing a deadline-deal to solidify his team for a deep run in ’11 will be as hot as it has ever been since Chiarelli landed his gig in 2006. So far, he has resisted the temptation to sacrifice the future for a quick fix in the present (which we know isn’t always the big fix it’s expected to be). The price for players the caliber of Marian Hossa, Ilya Kovalchuk and Tomas Kaberle (who still hasn’t been moved) has always been too high for Chiarelli’s taste, so he has passed.

Chiarelli has to continue to build through his youth and stockpile those prospects and picks for the future. Just next summer, the Bruins are going to have difficult decisions to make with free agents Blake Wheeler and Mark Stuart. In future summers Tuukka Rask, David Krejci, Tyler Seguin and Lucic (after his second contract expires) will have to be dealt with. Some players will stay and some will go. The Bruins will be in a better position to negotiate if they have talent in the pipeline ready to step in.

There’s no doubt that as a player, the Sutter work ethic was something worth emulating, and that Darryl Sutter had the right idea at the start of his GM run. For Peter Chiarelli, everything Sutter did after the lockout, however, should be more of an example of what not to do to ensure a long, successful run as general manager of the Bruins.

deal from strength/abundance, and defense is neither a strength nor abundant. defensive depth is huge in the nhl and in the playoffs, chiarelli knows this, that’s one reason why he is always looking to improve it. the pipeline depth looks promising but is not ready, especially not ready to jump in during the middle of the playoffs if needed.

not to mention, kampfer is nowhere near ready to be counted on as the puck moving savior chia has been dying to find. hunwick was thought to be that after a strong half season, lesson learned, wait on kampfer a little bit.

if a deal is to be made, i would think a forward is likely to go, especially with hunwick already sent out of town. many would like to see a guy like ference go, and a move like that would clear space needed to bring someone in. but i dont think there is much of a market amongst teams that are sellers. they are looking for youth, prospects and picks in return, something the B’s have quite a bit of. so maybe that sounds like stuart is available, but i’d hate to see him go. maybe a package deal happens letting go of both a dman and a forward and getting both in return. but i dont see chia bringing in a top flight winger, he is always looking for a top dman, so i would expect any forward brought in to be a bottom 6 guy. look for chia to move youth like wheeler (another guy i’d hate to see go). doubtful he moves a center other than savard, but i dont think the lenient aspects of his no-trade kick in until next year. maybe rask is an odd man out… i think the problem chia is having is that same as most of us fans, sometimes you don’t want to let go of a player even if he is underperforming a little because you know of his potential. and that the market isnt as good as he’d like for underperforming players. and the no trades, eventhough its *only* 5.

I could imagine Parise in a Bruins uniform definitely but Lamoriello is going to clear out space ASAP he already has sent Rolston packing look for LagenBrunner and Arnott to go as well so Lou can make an offer to Zack.

Great article Matt and I agree GR90 Stuart might be the odd man out with Kampfer playing well.

keep dreaming that wonderful dream GR 🙂 and Ryder isn’t going anywhere until July 1, forget about the deadline.

What I think is most interesting about this article, is while Kalman points out how Chia has strayed from Sutter’s mistakes, he has made similar mistakes, but has just been able to dig himself out of them a little bit. Example: jokinen’s 19pts for 3 mil, ryder only has a few more for an extra mil. And jokinen had a slow start and has been picking up his pace lately, where as ryder as been fairly steady this season, especailly compared to last year, so I’d say the production is a wash. being able to only pay a player with jokinen’s status as a “star” 3mil is remarkable compared to chia’s overpayments of ryder and a few others.
there are some other comparisons but for nearly every positive about chia, particularly in this artcile comparing him to sutter, i thought of a similar boneheaded move by chia. admittedly not necessarily as bad, or he was able to slip out of them, but still boneheaded nonetheless.

Great article. Right now, it seems that Chia has done a phenomenal job of stock-piling picks, trading for prospects (Kampfer, Bartkowski, Warofsky), and drafting in general (Colborne, Caron, Spooner, Knight). That being said, with the emergence of Kampfer as the potential PMD solution, I think Chia needs to go to work before the deadline to bring in a good “finishing” winger; and it’s entirely possible that it could happen.

Stuart could be gone by the deadline ($1.675 mil), as could Paille ($1.075 mil) Ryder ($4 mil). That’s nearly $7mil of yearly salary off the books… with that kind of space, and with plenty of prospects/picks, the B’s could even bring in a #7 D-man as an insurance policy along with a strong winger. In my ideal world, the Devils would realize that Zach Parise is not going to want to sign with their circus organization, and trade him to the B’s for, say, Stuart, Knight, and a draft pick or two. Oh, what a lovely dream that would be, especially if the B’s could get an extension out of Parise. Can you imagine?